Report from Newport Beach
By now, I'm sure many of you have seen reports from the NB screening...it was truly a wonderful night. Thank you SO MUCH to all the cast and crew members who came down to lend their support. We just wish David had been able to be there, but he's very busy directing another film in Vancouver.
A special thanks to everyone who just stopped by to tell us how much you loved the movie. I especially love putting faces to internet names (Ahem, Ash? You guys WERE the ones I was looking for!)
When we get back from Santa Cruz, I'll put together a slide show. So if you have a picture you want to include, please send it to the gmail account.
And On to Santa Cruz
Next Stop? The Rio theater in Santa Cruz! This Saturday (April 28), at 7:30. Since Ten Inch Hero is set in SCruz, we're very excited to be "coming home!"
And after that...?
We don't know. Really. We're working hard to get the movie out there so all of you can see it. Trust me--we want every one of you to see the movie on the big screen.
When we know about future screenings or film fests, we will put it on the blog or the myspace. So keep checking!
What can we do to help?
We LOVE that you guys ask us that.
The best thing an indie movie can have is BUZZ, so just keep spreading the word. And if you've seen the movie and you love it, a quick review and/or rating on IMDB goes a long way. We really appreciate the reviews we've received out there so far.
I remembered something I wanted to ask!
Hey, we're still taking questions! Feel free to send them in. We'll answer some more after Santa Cruz.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Ten Inch Hero in Phoenix by Andy and Tara
TIFs Tara and Andy made this terrific video of the sights and sounds of Ten Inch Hero's screening at Phoenix Film Festival.
The music is by Feeder, and is featured in the Ten Inch Hero soundtrack.
HUGE thanks to Tara and Andy for making this, as well as to all our new friends who agreed to participate.
The music is by Feeder, and is featured in the Ten Inch Hero soundtrack.
HUGE thanks to Tara and Andy for making this, as well as to all our new friends who agreed to participate.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Film Festival Update
Report From Phoenix
We are stunned, humbled, and just so excited by the "arms-wide-open" reception we received this weekend. Amazing feedback and reviews we're reading.
We can't wait to get some pictures and/or video...please send them to the gmail account, and we'll post them! Remember, the coveted TIH t-shirt is at stake!
And on to Newport Beach!
With Phoenix behind us, we turn to our screening at the Newport Beach Film Festival in Orange County, CA on April 25.
Please note that two of the Phoenix screenings sold out and had to turn people away. Please order your NB tickets ASAP. As far as we know, there WILL be a Q&A session following the screening.
And the Santa Cruz Film Festival...
Close on the heels of Newport Beach is the Santa Cruz Film Festival. The show is Saturday, April 28 at 7:30 p.m. at the Rio Theater. That theater is HUGE, but, as the closing show of the film festival, we are hoping to PACK IT!
We are stunned, humbled, and just so excited by the "arms-wide-open" reception we received this weekend. Amazing feedback and reviews we're reading.
We can't wait to get some pictures and/or video...please send them to the gmail account, and we'll post them! Remember, the coveted TIH t-shirt is at stake!
And on to Newport Beach!
With Phoenix behind us, we turn to our screening at the Newport Beach Film Festival in Orange County, CA on April 25.
Please note that two of the Phoenix screenings sold out and had to turn people away. Please order your NB tickets ASAP. As far as we know, there WILL be a Q&A session following the screening.
And the Santa Cruz Film Festival...
Close on the heels of Newport Beach is the Santa Cruz Film Festival. The show is Saturday, April 28 at 7:30 p.m. at the Rio Theater. That theater is HUGE, but, as the closing show of the film festival, we are hoping to PACK IT!
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Our Poster is Here!!!
You'll have to head over to myspace if you want to see it bigger, but this should give you a good idea!!
Mark on the Radio!
Just a note: If you're coming to Phoenix on Friday...
Be sure to get to the theater no later than 15 minutes before the show time. In fact, I'd shoot for 30 minutes early! They're expecting the show to be packed.
See you there!
Mark's On the Radio!
Click here to download the audio of Mark on the radio! Warning--it's a biggie, so don't do it if you have a dial up! Thanks to Cynthia and Amber for their help.
(If you have problems with this, shoot me a message...I *think* it's working properly).
Be sure to get to the theater no later than 15 minutes before the show time. In fact, I'd shoot for 30 minutes early! They're expecting the show to be packed.
See you there!
Mark's On the Radio!
Click here to download the audio of Mark on the radio! Warning--it's a biggie, so don't do it if you have a dial up! Thanks to Cynthia and Amber for their help.
(If you have problems with this, shoot me a message...I *think* it's working properly).
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Producer Mark Witsken to be on the Radio!
Tomorrow (Monday) morning, producer Mark Witsken will be a guest on public radio in Santa Cruz around 10:30 am pacific. He will be part of a panel talking about the upcoming Santa Cruz Film Festival, where TIH is the closing show.
If you're not in the area, you SHOULD be able to listen in on the feed at KUSP.ORG, but with live radio...no promises, okay?
We'll try to get a recording of it for the myspace page one way or the other.
If you're not in the area, you SHOULD be able to listen in on the feed at KUSP.ORG, but with live radio...no promises, okay?
We'll try to get a recording of it for the myspace page one way or the other.
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Mark's Mammoth Music Blog
Hi, I'm Mark Witsken, producer of "Ten Inch Hero." A lot of people have asked us about some of the music in our movie. Brace yourself for a long entry. I apologize in advance. [Note: If you are hyper-ventilating, frantically scanning for the words "Bethany Joy" to appear, you can skip to the middle of paragraph 4.]
The process of finding and creating songs for our movie has been a blast, and very important to me. Being a musician myself, I am thinking about it all the time; I kept a list of songs for a year that I wanted to use in the movie, in the end, -0- of them made the final cut! Which is cool because we found so many great new bands and artists, and produced a few songs for the movie ourselves. Director/producer David Mackay, Music supervisor Andrea von Foerster, and myself got together many times to exchange lists and listen to ideas.
Some other time I may write more of a blog on the new artists we discovered and their songs we chose for the movie. In the meantime, check this one out, the song is called "Blue" by up-and-comer Dave Lichens. Go to www.myspace.com/davelichens and listen to the track. Then watch "the BLUE recording session" video posted underneath the blogs – very cool!
As I said, we (myself and David) produced 3 new songs ourselves, along with composer Don Davis. Don is a world-class composer of many films such as The Matrix and Behind Enemy Lines. We were honored to have him score our film, and it was an amazing learning trip to watch him compose and record his music. He also takes criticism surprisingly well on his bass playing. He composed the original score for our movie, and he and Bethany Joy Galeotti wrote some new songs, sung by Bethany Joy, for the movie soundtrack. The 4 of us kicked those ideas around for months, sending demos back and forth across the country, until we settled on a few songs and recorded them.
But here is how the whole thing with Bethany Joy Galeotti (who is one of the stars of the CW network show, One Tree Hill) came about:
Last spring I was talking to my teenage pal Madison A. who is a really good friend, and she has great musical taste too, it turns out... I knew she was a One Tree Hill fan so I told her David & I were going to be meeting with Bethany Joy about the movie. Madison was excited and told me, "you know, she's a great singer too, I saw her at the One Tree Hill concert and she was amazing." Well, now I had to hear more....
So at the end of our meeting with Bethany Joy, (which went great and David and I have been fans of hers ever since), I asked about her music and did she have a demo CD or anything. She said she did in her car but needed to go burn me a copy... so she runs out and burns a copy on her laptop, comes back in like a half-hour and hands me this CD-R with song titles written on a piece of paper. I went home and listened to it, and I don't want to be melodramatic but I was blown away. And that happens very rarely. Amazing vocals, wonderful vocal style, very real and natural, great phrasing, and 100% natural real sound, none of that over-processed, auto-tuned to death stuff we're all used to hearing now. Two songs in particular grabbed me and would not let go, "Blue Sky," and "Never Gonna Be." (I have probably listened to Blue Sky now 50-100 times; it's a cover of a Patty Griffin song.) So I gave the CD to David and told him this is no ordinary singer, she's amazingly good. He listened and felt the same way I did.
At this point it looked like it would not work out for Bethany Joy to be involved in the film for various complicated reasons. And then she sent an email to us, which I can't get into the details... but just saying something to us about the movie, in her own special way... and it made such an impression on both of us. We both read it separately, and then I walked into David's office and we were looking at each other like, she HAS to be involved in our movie!
So we got to talking along those lines, and at first wanted to possibly use one of her songs on the CD in the movie but the rights were owned by major companies, and were difficult to license. So then we thought, hey let's see if she wants to record a new song for the movie. Well as soon as we told Don Davis about the idea, he was totally into writing something with her... so we all jumped into the project and she started sending us a few demos of ideas she had, and Don started writing the music for some songs, for Bethany Joy to add lyrics. In the end we used 3 songs from this process, 2 rock songs and an emotional ballad.
The songs were recorded at Don's studio in the Woodland Hills area of Los Angeles. Bethany Joy flew in while on a break from OTH filming, and she recorded ALL the vocals in basically a day and a half. I was very concerned to have her cram that much singing into 2 days, this was mostly new material, very little rehearsal time, and one of the songs had brand new lyrics, I think she just wrote them on the airplane or something! But she is such a pro and so in control of her voice that it was a piece of cake.
Her husband Michael came in too, he arrived late because he missed his flight, I think he hadn't shaved and looked like a terrorist, or maybe he forgot his license, I can't recall. But he flew in later to have dinner with all of us. Great guy, I am amazed to this day because he sat there, with the 3 of us blow-hards, (David, me and Don, not Bethany) pontificating and lecturing on all this and that, as people will do when creating anything by committee... and Michael sat there and didn't say a word, he just held his tongue even though I'm sure he had plenty of opinions on what was going on. He's a talented musician too, in a band called ENation. They are excellent, Bethany Joy gave me their CD. In fact, she made me listen to the whole thing on the long drive up from the L.A. airport. She's like, "Oh, hope you don't mind, do you? Check this out…" as she's putting the CD in and blasting the volume... But it was great, luckily. So check them out.
The 3 songs we recorded are titled "The Long Way," "Get Your Love" and "Something Familiar."
I don't know if they will be released before or after the movie comes out, that is a whole [business/ record company /soundtrack] scenario that is impossible to predict. But the one thing I do know is we feel blessed to have been able to work with Bethany Joy Galeotti and bring more of her talents to you! Hope you enjoy the results.
Thanks for being interested in what we do-
Mark Witsken
The process of finding and creating songs for our movie has been a blast, and very important to me. Being a musician myself, I am thinking about it all the time; I kept a list of songs for a year that I wanted to use in the movie, in the end, -0- of them made the final cut! Which is cool because we found so many great new bands and artists, and produced a few songs for the movie ourselves. Director/producer David Mackay, Music supervisor Andrea von Foerster, and myself got together many times to exchange lists and listen to ideas.
Some other time I may write more of a blog on the new artists we discovered and their songs we chose for the movie. In the meantime, check this one out, the song is called "Blue" by up-and-comer Dave Lichens. Go to www.myspace.com/davelichens and listen to the track. Then watch "the BLUE recording session" video posted underneath the blogs – very cool!
As I said, we (myself and David) produced 3 new songs ourselves, along with composer Don Davis. Don is a world-class composer of many films such as The Matrix and Behind Enemy Lines. We were honored to have him score our film, and it was an amazing learning trip to watch him compose and record his music. He also takes criticism surprisingly well on his bass playing. He composed the original score for our movie, and he and Bethany Joy Galeotti wrote some new songs, sung by Bethany Joy, for the movie soundtrack. The 4 of us kicked those ideas around for months, sending demos back and forth across the country, until we settled on a few songs and recorded them.
But here is how the whole thing with Bethany Joy Galeotti (who is one of the stars of the CW network show, One Tree Hill) came about:
Last spring I was talking to my teenage pal Madison A. who is a really good friend, and she has great musical taste too, it turns out... I knew she was a One Tree Hill fan so I told her David & I were going to be meeting with Bethany Joy about the movie. Madison was excited and told me, "you know, she's a great singer too, I saw her at the One Tree Hill concert and she was amazing." Well, now I had to hear more....
So at the end of our meeting with Bethany Joy, (which went great and David and I have been fans of hers ever since), I asked about her music and did she have a demo CD or anything. She said she did in her car but needed to go burn me a copy... so she runs out and burns a copy on her laptop, comes back in like a half-hour and hands me this CD-R with song titles written on a piece of paper. I went home and listened to it, and I don't want to be melodramatic but I was blown away. And that happens very rarely. Amazing vocals, wonderful vocal style, very real and natural, great phrasing, and 100% natural real sound, none of that over-processed, auto-tuned to death stuff we're all used to hearing now. Two songs in particular grabbed me and would not let go, "Blue Sky," and "Never Gonna Be." (I have probably listened to Blue Sky now 50-100 times; it's a cover of a Patty Griffin song.) So I gave the CD to David and told him this is no ordinary singer, she's amazingly good. He listened and felt the same way I did.
At this point it looked like it would not work out for Bethany Joy to be involved in the film for various complicated reasons. And then she sent an email to us, which I can't get into the details... but just saying something to us about the movie, in her own special way... and it made such an impression on both of us. We both read it separately, and then I walked into David's office and we were looking at each other like, she HAS to be involved in our movie!
So we got to talking along those lines, and at first wanted to possibly use one of her songs on the CD in the movie but the rights were owned by major companies, and were difficult to license. So then we thought, hey let's see if she wants to record a new song for the movie. Well as soon as we told Don Davis about the idea, he was totally into writing something with her... so we all jumped into the project and she started sending us a few demos of ideas she had, and Don started writing the music for some songs, for Bethany Joy to add lyrics. In the end we used 3 songs from this process, 2 rock songs and an emotional ballad.
The songs were recorded at Don's studio in the Woodland Hills area of Los Angeles. Bethany Joy flew in while on a break from OTH filming, and she recorded ALL the vocals in basically a day and a half. I was very concerned to have her cram that much singing into 2 days, this was mostly new material, very little rehearsal time, and one of the songs had brand new lyrics, I think she just wrote them on the airplane or something! But she is such a pro and so in control of her voice that it was a piece of cake.
Her husband Michael came in too, he arrived late because he missed his flight, I think he hadn't shaved and looked like a terrorist, or maybe he forgot his license, I can't recall. But he flew in later to have dinner with all of us. Great guy, I am amazed to this day because he sat there, with the 3 of us blow-hards, (David, me and Don, not Bethany) pontificating and lecturing on all this and that, as people will do when creating anything by committee... and Michael sat there and didn't say a word, he just held his tongue even though I'm sure he had plenty of opinions on what was going on. He's a talented musician too, in a band called ENation. They are excellent, Bethany Joy gave me their CD. In fact, she made me listen to the whole thing on the long drive up from the L.A. airport. She's like, "Oh, hope you don't mind, do you? Check this out…" as she's putting the CD in and blasting the volume... But it was great, luckily. So check them out.
The 3 songs we recorded are titled "The Long Way," "Get Your Love" and "Something Familiar."
I don't know if they will be released before or after the movie comes out, that is a whole [business/ record company /soundtrack] scenario that is impossible to predict. But the one thing I do know is we feel blessed to have been able to work with Bethany Joy Galeotti and bring more of her talents to you! Hope you enjoy the results.
Thanks for being interested in what we do-
Mark Witsken
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Free SCruz Tickets are Gone!
I'm not sure yet who was first--I need to sort out the time stamps between the different places. But the free SCruz tickets are definitely gone.
However, there are still plenty available to buy. Hope to see you there!
However, there are still plenty available to buy. Hope to see you there!
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Ten Inch Hero at the Santa Cruz Film Festival & New Contest!
We are thrilled to announce that Ten Inch Hero has been chosen as the special closing night screening at the Santa Cruz Film Festival. The show is Saturday, April 28 at 7:30 p.m. at the Rio Theater.
Ten Inch Hero is set in Santa Cruz, so we are especially excited to be "coming home." The Rio theater is very large, and we're hoping to PACK IT!
To celebrate, we have five pairs of tickets to give away--these will get you into the screening as well as the closing party after. We'll give the tickets to the first five people who email us and ask!
So as of now, here are all the upcoming shows of TIH.
Phoenix Film Festival
Friday, April 13 at 8:00 p.m.
Saturday, April 14 at 9:20 a.m.
Sunday, April 15 at 4:00 p.m.
Newport Beach Film Festival
Wednesday, April 25 at 6:30 p.m., Edwards Cinema in Fashion Island
Santa Cruz Film Festival
Saturday, April 28 at 7:30 p.m., Rio Theater
New Contest for a T-Shirt
We know there are lots of TIFs out there who are disappointed they can't come to Phoenix next weekend.
So we're asking our TIFs who ARE attending Phoenix to share the love by taking pictures for us. People in line, the poster on display, the Q&A session, David eating popcorn--even a short video of fans waiting to go in, fans saying how much the movie rocks, etc.
We'll pick the 10 or so we like best, put them on display, AND give you full credit. Then we'll somehow reach consensus on our favorite and send you one of our cast & crew t-shirts, just like the one that's in the mail to Tiffany (our manip winner) right now.
Just please keep it PG13, so we CAN display it. Yeah, we know what you were thinking...
Ten Inch Hero is set in Santa Cruz, so we are especially excited to be "coming home." The Rio theater is very large, and we're hoping to PACK IT!
To celebrate, we have five pairs of tickets to give away--these will get you into the screening as well as the closing party after. We'll give the tickets to the first five people who email us and ask!
So as of now, here are all the upcoming shows of TIH.
Phoenix Film Festival
Friday, April 13 at 8:00 p.m.
Saturday, April 14 at 9:20 a.m.
Sunday, April 15 at 4:00 p.m.
Newport Beach Film Festival
Wednesday, April 25 at 6:30 p.m., Edwards Cinema in Fashion Island
Santa Cruz Film Festival
Saturday, April 28 at 7:30 p.m., Rio Theater
New Contest for a T-Shirt
We know there are lots of TIFs out there who are disappointed they can't come to Phoenix next weekend.
So we're asking our TIFs who ARE attending Phoenix to share the love by taking pictures for us. People in line, the poster on display, the Q&A session, David eating popcorn--even a short video of fans waiting to go in, fans saying how much the movie rocks, etc.
We'll pick the 10 or so we like best, put them on display, AND give you full credit. Then we'll somehow reach consensus on our favorite and send you one of our cast & crew t-shirts, just like the one that's in the mail to Tiffany (our manip winner) right now.
Just please keep it PG13, so we CAN display it. Yeah, we know what you were thinking...
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